Designs for Life

Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-0-521-57078-7
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 444 Seiten, Format (B × H): 175 mm x 250 mm, Gewicht: 940 g

Molecular biology has come to dominate our perceptions of life, health and disease. In the decades following World War II, the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge was a world-renowned centre of this emerging discipline. It was here that Crick and Watson, Kendrew and Perutz, Sanger and Brenner pursued their celebrated investigations. Soraya de Chadarevian's important new study is the first to examine the creation and expansion of molecular biology through the prism of this remarkable institution. Firmly placing the history of the laboratory in its broader institutional and scientific context, she shows how molecular biology was built at the lab bench and through the wide circulation of tools, models and researchers, as well as in governmental committees, international exhibitions and television studios. Designs for Life is a major contribution both to the history of molecular biology, and to the history of science and technology in post-war Britain. Nominated as one of the top 5 Science books of 2002 by The Sunday Times.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chadarevian, Soraya de

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Vorklinische Medizin: Grundlagenfächer Humangenetik
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Tierkunde / Zoologie Tiergenetik, Reproduktion
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Genetik und Genomik (nichtmedizinisch)
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Molekularbiologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Human- und Sozialwissenschaften
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Botanik Pflanzenreproduktion, Verbreitung, Genetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; Part I. Postwar Reconstruction and Biophysics: 1. World War II and the mobilisation of British scientists; 2. Reconstructing life; 3. Proteins, crystals and computers; 4. Televisual language; Part II. Building Molecular Biology: 5. Locating the double helix; 6. Disciplinary moves; 7. The origins of molecular biology revisited; Part III. Bench Work and Politics: 8. Laboratory cultures; 9. On the governmental agenda; 10. The end of an era; Conclusions.

Über Autor(innen)

Chadarevian, Soraya de
Soraya de Chadarevian is Senior Research Associate and Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Zwischen den Diskursen: Maurice Merleau-Ponty und die Wissenschaften (1990), and co-editor (with Harmke Kamminga) of Molecularizing Biology and Medicine: New Practices and Alliances 1910s-1970s (1998). She is advisory editor of Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences.